Category Archives: Uncategorized

Consumer groups call for cancer warnings on alcohol

Various consumer and health groups –  including the Consumer Federation of America, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American Public Health Association, Breast Cancer Action, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance — have called for the following warning on alcohol beverage labels: GOVERNMENT WARNING: According to […]

Dept of Education not processing applications for student-debt relief

On Tuesday, seven borrowers sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education after the agency failed to take action on their applications for relief from student loans. Under a 1995 law, the Department has authority to forgive the federal debt of students whose colleges defrauded them. The agency, however, has not approved or […]

Consumer group asks for investigation into “surveillance scoring”

A consumer-advocacy group as asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a practice where retailers use consumer information collected by data brokers to decide how much to charge individual customers. According to the petition submitted to the FTC by #REPRESENT, part of the Consumer Education Foundation, "[m]ajor American corporations, including online and retail businesses, employers […]

Court finds employees have standing to sue after data breach

On Friday, the DC Circuit held that two groups of federal workers can move forward with class action lawsuits against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) over a 2015 data breach that exposed the personal information of 22 million people.The district court had dismissed the case, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing and had failed […]

FTC investigates YouTube for violations of kids’ privacy

The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly launched an investigation into YouTube after complaints from consumer groups and privacy advocates alleging that YouTube violates kids' privacy. The complaints contend that YouTube failed to protect kids who used the streaming-video service and improperly collected their data in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 […]

Are state attorneys general enforcing Dodd-Frank in a fair, non-partisan way?

Professors Brian Feinstein, Chen Meng, and Manisha Padi took a look at that question from one angle in State Attorneys General & Lender Behavior. Here is the abstract: The Dodd-Frank Act empowers state attorneys general to enforce, with limited exception, both state and federal laws concerning predatory lending, unfair and deceptive practices, information disclosure, and […]

“How Payday Lenders Spent $1 Million at a Trump Resort — and Cashed In”

That's the title of this ProPublica piece by Anjali Tsui and Alice Wilder. Among other things, this article explains that the payday loan industry's trade group has held its last two annual conventions at a Trump property while at the same time that the Trump Administration's regulatory stance has been decidedly pro-payday lending. The article […]

Company to cancel and repay $40 million in payday loans that violated state rate caps

The Dallas Morning News reports that Think Finance Inc., a Fort Worth financial firm, will cancel its outstanding loans and pay nearly $40 million to consumers after engaging in an alleged payday lending operation that used Native American tribes as shields from state laws. Think Finance serviced loans that charged interest rates over 375% and […]

Supreme Court: Virginia law banning uranium mining is not preempted by federal law

In yesterday's opinion in Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, the Supreme Court held that a Virginia law banning uranium mining is not preempted by the Atomic Energy Act. The vote was 6 to 3, with the six Justices in the majority divided between two separate opinions—the first announcing the judgment of the Court, written by […]

Essay on common characteristics and problems in aggregated litigation

In The Continuum of Aggregation, law prof Alexi Lahav discusses the commonalities in various types of aggregated litigation. Here is the abstract: This essay, written for a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of the multidistrict litigation statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1407, traces the evolution in thinking about aggregation, analyzes the forms of aggregate litigation — […]